Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

News from the pink panties crowd.

In affidavits filed in court and in legal briefs filed by nearly 60 police chiefs belonging to either the St. Louis Area Police Chiefs Association or the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, police officials raise questions about Missouri’s new “Second Amendment Preservation Act.”

The chiefs say, “some of the wording and structure of SAPA has inadvertently caused confusion and raised a number of questions that hinder law enforcement’s ability to defend and protect Missouri citizens.”

“Unintended operational consequences.”  They want clarification that they can still eat doughnuts with their bestest buddies and partners in stuff, the FedGov.

Here is the clarification they should get.  “State law now stipulates that you arrest and charge all agents of the FedGov who enforce gun control laws of any kind.”

Suck it up, pink panty boys.  This is an evolution that must occur.  It’s inevitable.  It’s going to happen.  These are just the beginning stages.  Decide which side you’re on.

News from Georgia.

Georgia could introduce a new open-carry gun law thanks to Governor Brian Kemp.

The governor and his wife will hold a meeting with both lawmakers and gun rights advocates in a gun shop on Wednesday. During this meeting, he is expected to announce support for new legislation that could revoke the need for people to have a license to carry a weapon in public. This law would affect both open and concealed guns, according to drafts obtained by the Associated Press.

“Building a safer, stronger Georgia starts with hardworking Georgians having the ability to protect themselves and their families,” wrote Kemp in the obtained draft remarks. “In the face of rising violent crime across the country, law-abiding citizens should have their constitutional rights protected.”

It is unclear whether these remarks will be given during his scheduled address. However, the upcoming conference does come after Republican lawmakers pressured Kemp to readdress his endorsement for constitutional carry during his first campaign for governor.

Nice.

But wait.  Why now?  Does he feel pressure from campaign promises?  More likely, does he feel pressure from allowing vote tallies to spike in the middle of the night in Georgia, thus placing Georgia right up there with the worst of the culprits and illegal thuggery in the last election?

Well, I hope constitutional carry (and open carry) is passed.  I hope the governor suffers a massive and ignominious fall.

Tom Knighton writing at Bearing Arms.

However, there are a couple of other bills that, if they pass, will put them squarely at odds with the federal government.

Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 7 would both create the Alabama Second Amendment Preservation Act. This act would prohibit state law enforcement from enforcing any federal law, or other legislation, regarding the regulation of firearms, firearm accessories or ammo.

The bills would also set up penalties for whatever agency violates the proposed bill. The penalty for a first offense is a class C misdemeanor with a fine no less than $500 or more than $5,000. For all other offenses, it is a class B misdemeanor with a fine no less than $1,000 or more than $7,000.

In other words, it’ll be much like Missouri’s law that went into effect earlier this year.

That law hasn’t really been tested in the courts yet, so we don’t know how that will go, so Alabama following suit may or may not be a great move for them.

However, there’s another bill that may cause far more problems.

A different bill, House Bill 13, would prohibit state law enforcement from enforcing any federal bill or other legislation pertaining to the regulation of firearms, firearm accessories or ammo, just like Senate Bill 2. However, this only pertains to those made and sold in Alabama.

Under existing constitution law, Congress is given the authority to regulate interstate commerce. This bill would provide that firearms, ammo and firearm accessories that are made in the state and are only traded within the state are not subject to federal law or regulation.

Now, on the surface, this looks great for Alabama and I happen to agree with the reasoning behind this bill.

That said, Kansas passed a bill like this a while back. There are now people in prison because they figured the law would protect them, but the courts disagreed.

Alabama is free to pass the bill, of course, but if you live there and think that once it does, you can go out and build yourself a machinegun, well, I have some very bad news for you.

It should be noted that the prosecutions in Kansas have been upheld by the courts, so there’s no reason to believe Alabama residents would have any better luck.

Frankly, this is a bill that probably shouldn’t be passed. Yes, it’s pro-gun and yes, I agree with the reasoning and thinking behind it. However, there are people who will think this gives them license to do things that it really can’t. It’ll hurt good, decent people who simply don’t realize they’re doing anything wrong.

That doesn’t benefit anyone, I’m afraid, so it’s probably for the best if this doesn’t actually get passed.

I think Tom gets this wrong on every account, and this certainly isn’t the first or twentieth time I’ve disagreed with the folks at Bearing Arms, and it won’t be the last.

To begin with, yes Alabama should pass both of these bills and they should be signed by the governor.  First and foremost should be the constitutional carry bill, but if they get this far, they should pass the balance of the pro-2A bills as well.

But then Kansas passed such a law and people are in jail because of it, right?  Well, not so fast.  We covered it.  Kansas passed a 2A sanctuary law and I covered it.  It was more of a nullification law, and had the express purpose of allowing the purchase of NFA items without seeking approval of the controllers inside the beltway.  I said at the time that unless the governor was willing to send state and county police to arrest and imprison FedGov agents who attempted to make arrests in Kansas for said actions, it was weak tea and not really a nullification law.  Even the sponsor of the bill said that it mostly symbolic.

The Alabama bill seems a bit different, focusing on whether agents of the state can participate with FedGov agents in making such arrests.  They are taking incremental steps.  Some state is eventually going to have to broach this issue sooner or later, but until a governor is willing to battle FedGov agents, we’re left with what we’ve got.

I see the last sentence of the paragraph … “This bill would provide that firearms, ammo and firearm accessories that are made in the state and are only traded within the state are not subject to federal law or regulation” … is the tricky part.  I wouldn’t test that part of the bill, if indeed it has that proviso.  As for prohibiting agents of the state from aiding the enforcement of any new federal laws, Alabama can certainly do that, and Missouri has thus far been quite successful thus far in preventing cooperation with the FedGov, which is a good thing.  Finally, if this portends to be a weak nullification law, I see it as possibly targeting FedGov control over things like semi-automatics and AR-15s as anything else.

As for the Missouri law not being tested in court, I seriously doubt that the word of a federal court will stand as the law if the governor of the state makes it clear that the state law will be enforced, and that agents of the state who aid the FedGov will indeed lose their ability to work in law enforcement ever again.

That’s the whole point.  There are certain things a state can do regardless of what a federal court says.  This is one of them.

Alabama should pass both bills, but only after focusing first on a constitutional carry bill.

Florida.

Some top Florida Republican lawmakers have now said they would support constitutional carry legislation in the upcoming session.

The policy would allow all legal gun owners to carry firearms without a concealed weapons license.

The constitutional carry legislation was filed by the Legislature’s most outspoken conservative member, Rep. Anthony Sabatini.

“Our very liberal Republican Speaker Chris Sprowls has gotten tens of thousands of emails from gun groups,” said Sabatini.

The policy is split into two bills.

The first would allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a license.

“You don’t have to go ask the government for permission,” said Sabatini.

The second would allow for open carry.

Please tell me that open carry will pass, and that I don’t have to watch any more idiotic police antics with cops showing their ass to everybody when guys open carry while fishing?  Please?

Alabama.

Remember Sheriff Sam Cochran (aka, Boss Hogg) who literally fired Stringer for having different political views?  Yes, that Boss Hogg.

To the folks in Mobile County.  Please tell me you’re going to find a way to get rid of that tyrannical goober you have for Sheriff.  Please?

News from Montana.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte is stepping forward to protect the residents of his state from the Biden administration’s assault on the Second Amendment.

On Friday, the Republican signed into law House Bill 258. It will prohibit state and local law enforcement officials from enforcing any federal ban or regulation on firearms, magazines and ammunition. It also prohibits the use of state funds to impose federal bans and regulations of these items.

“Today, I proudly signed Rep. Hinkle’s law prohibiting federal overreach into our Second Amendment-protected rights, including any federal ban on firearms,” Gianforte wrote in a Twitter post. “I will always protect our #2A right to keep and bear arms.”

[ … ]

On Friday, The Associated Press reported that Montana’s legislature has tried to pass similar legislation three times in the last eight years – in 2013, 2015 and 2017. Each bill, however, was vetoed by the state’s former Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.

In early April, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a comparable bill called the “Second Amendment Firearm Freedom Act,” into law.

Arizona, Missouri, Montana, and possibly New Hampshire (if the law passes), have all taken such action.  This is becoming a good touchstone for who deserves your support in your own state.  If they won’t pledge to sign a similar bill, tell them you’ll campaign for their opponent.

BBC.

Ah, we’re to the crux of the matter, yes?  So let’s help explain this to the article author and the Fordham professor.

As we observed earlier,

Briefly, I couldn’t care less what English common law says about anything.  The colonists fought a war over many things, including gun control (see Kopel, “How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution“).

The colonists fought a war against the government to overthrow tyranny.  It’s ridiculous and sophomoric to pretend that they ever assumed that men wouldn’t engage in RKBA, or that they wouldn’t turn those guns against tyranny.

Presuppositions.  This is the stuff of life.  The 2A makes no sense unless seen in the light of the lives of the men who wrote it and their own assumptions, value judgments and world and life views.

Any lawyer who begins with, discusses or ends with English common law isn’t worth his weight in salt.

But you see, most lawyers aren’t worth their weight in salt, or they are tipping their hat to the ruling elite inside the beltway.  As for the judges and justices, look at just how badly they got it wrong.  Consider Scalia’s own words, and after reading them again, don’t ever again laud the ridiculous Heller decision or Scalia as it pertains to rights.

The professor from Fordham is correct in that “England was a super hierarchical society, and one in which the King has a monopoly of force and violence.”  Not only was Scalia wrong in this sentiment or analysis, he founds the RKBA solely in English common law after the founders waged a war against England, with that war precipitated by the very thing under debate, i.e., gun control.

It does indeed boggle the mind.  But not really so much when one considers that the Heller decision was all about making the RKBA semi-palatable for the nobility inside the beltway.

Heller offers a Second Amendment cleaned up so that it can safely be brought into the homes of affluent Washington suburbanites who would never dream of resistance-they have too much sunk into the system–but who might own a gun to protect themselves from the private dangers that, they believe, stalk around their doors at night. Scalia commonly touts his own judicial courage, his willingness to read the Constitution as it stands and let the chips fall where they may. But Heller is noteworthy for its cowardice.

We must keep the chattering class and the wine and cheese crowd happy at all costs.

The secret that the Fordham professor and the author of this piece doesn’t understand is that most Americans see the 2A as a covenant, not a source of rights.  Most gun owners see their RKBA as given by God, not bestowed by the state.

Arguing the way these lawyers have, and judging the way even Scalia did, is not representative of America.  So the professor is utterly wrong when he says “Obviously, that doesn’t include many people in the gun rights community …”

Oh my.  He may correctly observe that of the legal community who is hell bent on pleasing their masters, but neither the author nor the professor are very much in touch with gun blogs, gun web sites, discussion threads (like reddit/Firearms or AR15.com), or even perhaps just knowing gun owners throughout flyover country.  We must be careful to distinguish between those who believe that we need the king’s permission to hunt the royal forests (because he owns the land), and we need the constable’s permission to carry a weapon (because he owns the roads), versus those who see such demands as a breakage of covenant leading to divorce.  We’ve been through divorce before, and it’s ugly.

What God grants cannot be removed by man, for it is as immutable as His nature.  This belief is hard wired into the American soul.  If the “nobility” presses this too far, these are lessons they may [re]learn the hardest of ways.

This comes courtesy of TTAG.

After listening to all of this, I think most of it is right.  Roberts will seek to do the thing that pisses off the fewest people, Kavanaugh seems to be solid on this, and Barrett might be the one who makes or breaks this.

Roberts and Barrett seem to be most concerned about “sensitive” places, and will likely try to circumscribe the RKBA that way.  They seem to be attempting to let just a little liberty seep out without angering the nobility ensconced inside the beltway.

Retarded.

When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in a closely watched guns case, the discussion won’t start with the last landmark ruling on firearms from 2010, or even with the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791.

Instead, attorneys on both sides will likely reach back to a 700-year-old English law – and a debate over the influence it had on the framing of the Constitution.

[ … ]

That has drawn both sides of the case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, into an intense battle over a statute from 1328 that some historians say informed the Framers’ views of when people may carry their guns in public. The Statute of Northampton regulated the carrying of “arms” in public places.

Briefly, I couldn’t care less what English common law says about anything.  The colonists fought a war over many things, including gun control (see Kopel, “How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution“).

The colonists fought a war against the government to overthrow tyranny.  It’s ridiculous and sophomoric to pretend that they ever assumed that men wouldn’t engage in RKBA, or that they wouldn’t turn those guns against tyranny.

Presuppositions.  This is the stuff of life.  The 2A makes no sense unless seen in the light of the lives of the men who wrote it and their own assumptions, value judgments and world and life views.

Any lawyer who begins with, discusses or ends with English common law isn’t worth his weight in salt.

A Lot.

Kavanaugh pressed Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone on the prospect that the legal machinery of the new abortion law could be used against other freedoms, referring to a brief filed by a gun rights group.

“We can assume that this will be across the board, equally applicable as the Firearms Policy Coalition says, to all constitutional rights?” Kavanaugh said, later asking Texas’ lawyer to imagine a law that let anyone sue a person for using an AR-15 rifle and hold them liable for $1 million.

Did they say something like that?  Oh to be sure, they did.

The importance of this petition is not about any debate over the existence or scope of any constitutional right to abortion. Indeed, Amicus takes no position on such questions, which are before this Court in other cases. Rather, this case is about access to the means of enforcing individual constitutional rights, as determined by this Court’s cases, and protecting against their infringement, regardless of the particular right involved. Texas’s novel scheme for infringing upon and chilling the exercise of the right to abortion under this Court’s Roe and Casey decisions while seeking to evade judicial review, if allowed to stand, could and would just as easily be applied to other  constitutional rights. That result is wholly anathema to our constitutional scheme, regardless what one thinks of abortion or, indeed, of any other hotly debated constitutional right, such as the right to keep and bear arms.

See also here.

But you see, there is no constitutional right to destroy a company because someone used their product to injure others, any more than there’s a constitutional right to kill babies.  Those things are just made up out of whole cloth.

FPC is scared that 2A rights will be violated if we disallow the killing of babies.  But if you make your bed with the devil, don’t be surprised when he kills you.  There is no basis for the belief that this argument won’t be used to kill the Texas law and then summarily ignored when a state or individual bankrupts a firearms company (with the black robed tyrants ignoring the case).

Justice has been sacrificed for expediency, because in the eyes of the FPC, the only thing standing in the way of the obliteration of the 2A is SCOTUS interpretation.  Then where are you?

To me, the same place we were.  God grants a right, man does not.  Breakage of the covenant of the 2A means that the government is illegitimate and must be divorced, not that we lose a right.

The FPC could have done a much better job with their brief.  They’re on the losing side of one issue, and they may end up on the losing side of yet another.

Fear is a vicious monster and should not be tolerated.

Seen in the comments at David’s WoG.

‘The Second Amendment states explicitly that it exists to protect “a well regulated Militia,” ‘

Ah, no!

What it says is that RKBA shall not be infringed.

In a prefatory clause it indicates ONE of the reasons why that must be true.

https://www.mic.com/articles/24210/gun-control-myth-the-second-amendment-makes-clear-guns-aren-t-just-for-the-military

Wishing it were otherwise, and trying to use SCOTUS lack of rulings on RKBA issues to make that wish come true, does not make it true.

What is rarely discussed by outfits such as Vox, is that for much of the Second Amendment’s existence, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was not under ceaseless attack, so there was no reason for SCOTUS to get involved.

But that is not in alignment of Vox’s version of the truth.

But as noted leftist and anti gun Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said:

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES.  This.  This.  And a thousand times yes.

I’ve pointed out before that firearms ownership was ubiquitous in the states.  The colonists had a RKBA because God granted it.  This is an axiomatic irreducible.  It is the predicate upon which everything else is based.  Without this presupposition, the second amendment makes no sense.

The framers needed only one reason to tell the FedGov to stay out of their business, and this was their main one.  The second amendment is not a treatise on the RKBA.  The second amendment is the states telling the FedGov not to interfere with the militia.  The militia brought their own armaments.

Thus, God gave the right to own firearms for hunting and feeding the family, just like he gave men the right to use rocks and spears and bow and arrow to do the same in ancient history.  If you want firearms for this purpose, God protects that right.  It is assumed in the second amendment, which doesn’t speak to hunting.

If you want cannon to protect your ship’s cargo, God gave you that right in the Holy Writ.  The second amendment doesn’t speak to cannon aboard ships of trade because it doesn’t have to.  It is assumed.

If you want to give your son a rifle to carry with him to school like the founders did for hunting and plinking and learning to be a man, that’s within your rights too, because God says so.

If you are 90 years old and unable to form with the militia but want a machine gun to defend your home, that’s within your rights too because God says so.

If you want firearms for 3-gun competition because you enjoy it, that’s within your rights because God says so, totally apart from forming with the militia.

Rights and duties are granted and given by the Almighty, the sovereign maker of the universe.  The second amendment is the states telling the FedGov to back off ever trying to regulate said rights because what’s at risk is the capability overthrow tyranny.

That’s all the founders had to say.  The second amendment is about tyranny.  Not hunting, not competition, not self defense, not pleasure plinking.  Those things are assumed, presupposed, and irreducible.  They are the basis for everything else – because God says so.